sovereignty self-assessment

personal accountability

Paterson (2016)

Since 2025 is my Year of Sovereignty I figure it could be useful to assess my relative strengths and weaknesses in the areas of life that matter most to me right now. From me elsewhere:

To me sovereignty is a deep internal security that is independent of my circumstances, it's responsibility and self-authorship and empowerment, it's an awareness that I am the ultimate authority of my life. I know who I am better than anyone else, so I trust that being myself as best as I can serves the highest good.

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Fitness: A-

I exercise 6 or 7 days a week - walking, running, lifting weights - and pay close attention to how my body is feeling. I’ve never made an intentional effort to study and practice making my form when lifting weights as good as good as it can be. Accordingly, I abandon an exercise for the day when there is even a hint of danger. This has only happened a handful of times, always during squats. I am not concerned with maximizing the results of my exercise routine.

Food: B

At the time of writing I overeat one or two days per week with unhealthy foods, although I believe I have recently improved my relationship with a relevant mental hurdle, and so this frequency will go down. I weigh myself once per week. I care about the number on the scale and that number is trending in the right direction. I rarely eat out and I cook healthy and tasty meals with whole foods.

Friendship: B-

This one feels difficult to elaborate on… the most relevant factors to me are quality of connection, presence when together in person, care felt towards them, care expressed towards them, frequency of reach-outs through text or DM or voice note, curiosity about them. This all varies from friend to friend of course.

Twitter: C

I spend more time on Twitter than I would like. I have clingy attentional hooks in a few tweeters which does not benefit either of us. I believe that I write excellent replies informed by both my creative aptitude and an awareness of the person I am replying to. I have some cherished friendships and connections which only exist thanks to Twitter.

YouTube: C-

I spend more time on YouTube than I would like. I get fixated on videos of people playing video games which are fundamentally similar to slot machines, but with a lot of complexity and decision making layered on top to disguise this fact. I also enjoy videos about personal development and spirituality and media analysis.

Family: C

As with friendship, I am not sure what to say about this. I have noticed an energetic and mental contraction that occurs in a specific context with my family and I am proactively addressing it. This change has promising initial results. I would like to do more “just because” text reachouts and be more vulnerable when in connection with my family.

Marketing: D

I would like to improve my mindset around marketing. It often feels like a burden to create marketing material for my offerings, and I imagine that its recipients do not want to receive it. I fall for a mental trap that says: when an offering receives little or no interest, that means that it is not valuable. I plan to bring in external help: a marketing mentor and/or a professional marketer.

Creativity: A

I’m very creative. I honor my creative intuition and expression even when I cannot explain it. I feel immense joy at both the breadth and depth of my creative body of work. I am proactively addressing what I see as a creative blindspot with Word Sleuth by choosing to focus on one creative project for a longer period of time than I typically do.